Ineptitude, Misplaced Priorities and a Crippling Debt
Nigeria’s self-denigrating foreign policy bent, like in many other African countries have, over the years, done nothing but eclipse sterling opportunities for socio-economic development and true political independence.
The chronic appetite for foreign aid and search for validation often arising from legitimacy and identity crises combine to produce a humiliating excitement at every opportunity to meet with foreign Heads of State and other world leaders especially in offshore locations.
From President Obasanjo’s globetrotting tenure between 1999 and 2007, ostensibly in search of Foreign Direct Investment, to President Buhari’s penchant for photo ops and handshake with world leaders, successive Nigeria’s presidents since 1999 often jump at every excuse no matter how flimsy, to undertake overseas travel. Every so often, you find them or one of the several Ministers and aids on the entourage signing all kinds of fruitless bilateral trade, development or cooperation agreements. Then they hurry to the media to announce so many benefits accruing from that meaningless trip believing it to make Nigerians happy or, at least, assuage the usual outrage.
All these speak to one or several of poor understanding of the principles and purpose of governance, ill-preparedness for the job, lack or loss of focus, incompetence, policy ineptitude, misplacement of priorities or mission to self-enrich. Whichever the case, Nigerians only have stunted economic growth and development, hunger and hopelessness to show for it.
Juxtaposing President Bola Tinubu’s COP28 outing to Dubai, UAE and the 2024 annual budget he recently presented to the joint session of the National Assembly betrays an obvious inadequate understanding of Nigeria’s problems, poor articulation of those problems and or simply, languid underlying intellectual input to the making of the budget.
One would have expected that with over N9 trillion deficit in the budget, spending scarce foreign exchange on so-called climate change jamboree would have been considered imprudent.
I am not unaware of the many “good” reasons Ajuri would proffer why the president could not have avoided the extravagance, including that the President of the United States might have called him personally to request that he attends and with full complement of a robust contingent. I would be peeved if the president would not have had the balls to tell him that Buhari left him an empty treasury and that the economy is on life support and as a result he would be rather busy at home trying to get things fixed. Nuhu Ribadu would have done the spokesmanship rather very well.
Perhaps the most copious benefits of COP28 to Nigeria and other developing economies is that they had the carrot of debt forgiveness waved like a flag in their faces, which they could grab if they only accept responsibility for carbon emission and its global warming consequences. I could bet one dollar that leaders of the most heavily indebted developing countries, including Nigeria, are already working out necessary modalities to take advantage. Otherwise, they should expect to have their balls squeezed with even greater frenzy in coming days.
Nevertheless, it is not difficult to establish a correlation between industrialization and carbon emission and by extension global warming. Yet the industrialized nations insist on pushing developing ones to accept responsibility. That could only be understood from the inability of the latter to resist the temptation of constantly groveling to them for financial and economic aids and loans with which they service budget deficits which end up in private pockets 99% of the times.
As at the end of Quarter 2 of 2023, Nigeria’s total debt stood at about N87.38 trillion. Is it not paradoxical, a hilarious oxymoron that this debt accumulated between 2010 and 2023, thirteen short years with much of it attributable to the Buhari administration? Within this period, what increase or improvement has the country recorded in its stock of assets or other economic indices? But we have attended scores of international conferences, signed tons of bilateral agreements with so-called development partners and have returned only false hopes. There is clearly an inverse relationship between the growing debt stock and development, and the question is, why?
The IMF tells you that you can borrow as long as debt to GDP ratio is within inflexion points. Empirical reality is that your citizens are suffering with every new loan obtained even if debt to GDP is as low as 10%. Growth and development are regressed and per capita remains abysmal. Over two thirds of the population live on less than one dollar a day even with the annual rituals of deficit budgeting and stupendous borrowings. But our leaders are just insensitive because their every bill is paid for with tax money.
While we are busy borrowing to fund the ostentation and avarice of the few, developed countries borrow even more heavily but to fund rail networks and robust transport systems, public schools, research and development in Artificial Intelligence, space technology, targeted sectoral development and more.
The saddest part of this story is that there are several low-hanging fruits everywhere in this country, literally. From the extractive to the manufacturing, from entertainment to education, viable industries abound that could, if harnessed, take Nigeria from Fourth to the First World in 10 short years.
I have said this before and it bears repeating. If I were President Tinubu, the deficit in my very first annual budget would be targeted at building petroleum refineries. The overarching plan would be to halt sale of crude oil overseas and have every single drop of it refined domestically. Imagine having 6 refineries in the 6 geopolitical zones accompanied by 6 clusters of tank farms to hold all the refined products. Again, imagine exporting these refined products to only African countries, taking advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.
This would achieve a number of things. First, Nigeria would earn a hundred times more in dollars from sale of refined products than it currently does from sale of crude oil. Second, Nigeria’s diplomacy would now become completely or largely afro-centric leading to Africa subregional cooperation. A third advantage is that this would end the culture of begging for alms which we impudently christen foreign aid and ultimately, true political independence would be inevitable not just for Nigeria but for the entire continent which would now look up to Nigeria for leadership and direction.
I call that a low hanging fruit. The N87 trillion in debts could have done all of that and more had we only been fortunate to have a president who could exercise his mental capacity and political will a little. We did not, and that was an opportunity missed but which can and should still be regained as quickly as possible. To structure this kind of loan is relatively easy.
Simply prequalify China, Russia, Germany and even Ukraine. Get the best deal on Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) or Public-Private Partnership (PPP) basis. Allow a maximum of 2 years for a turn-key completion and another 10 to 25 years for a well-defined repayment plan. Such plan should accommodate 100% domestic consumption as well as basic income for the 3 tiers of government while the contract subsists. It is not rocket science, is it?
Email: toksokorie@gmail.com
